Datacolor expands Spyder Checkr card system

For those who don’t know the tool: Datacolor develops colour-management hardware and software, with the Spyder range spanning acquisition references and display calibration. Spyder Checkr sits at the acquisition end: photo targets can feed HSL correction presets into Lightroom Classic, Camera Raw and Phocus, while its video targets provide visual references for waveform and vectorscope work in Resolve, Premiere and Final Cut Pro. The new products expand the physical reference-card options rather than introducing a new workflow.

Pick a card

Datacolor has expanded the SpyderCheckr family with four products: the SpyderCheckr Photo Grey Balance Card, Photo White Balance Card, Photo Card Set and Video Card Set. The news is pleasantly hype-free. No new cloud, no mysterious AI adjective and no licence manager lurking behind a login screen. Datacolor is making its reference system more modular, so users can replace cards or mix Photo and Video sets without replacing the holder. The existing SpyderCheckr Photo and Video housings provide four card slots. With the complementary card sets, photographers and video crews can configure those slots for the job at hand. Worn cards can also be replaced without retiring an otherwise perfectly innocent piece of plastic.

Grey matter

The new Grey Balance Card combines an 18 percent neutral-grey field with an integrated multi-step greyscale for exposure measurement, white balance and tonal checking. The White Balance Card swaps the large grey field for a spectrally neutral white reference while retaining a greyscale strip. It is intended for white-balance and tonal evaluation on-set.

Both cards come with protective sleeves. This is worth using. A reference surface covered in fingerprints is technically still a reference, just not necessarily to anything useful. And we all had that one intern so young they still were somehow covered in chocolate all the time. And needed changing.

These cards are deliberately simple – physical neutral references rather than software. Put the card under the same lighting as the subject, record the reference and carry that information downstream.

Photo meets Video

The Photo and Video card sets extend the modular idea further. A SpyderCheckr Photo owner can add the Video collection, while a Video owner can add the Photo collection. For mixed stills and motion work, that is the interesting part – instead of carrying two complete holders, the operator can choose the cards needed for the current setup.

Datacolor also emphasises replacement as a sustainability benefit. Damaged or worn cards need not condemn the entire holder to the equipment cupboard, where obsolete accessories traditionally go to contemplate their life.

Rec.709 meets cardboard

For video work, Datacolor positions SpyderCheckr as a reference for matching cameras and lenses and for colour correction targeting Rec.709. The aim is to establish known colour, grey and white references during acquisition so that post has something firmer than memory and optimism to work from. That matters: the card is a reference target, not a engine. It does not replace the colourist, the scopes or the downstream correction workflow. It gives them measured visual material from the actual shoot.

For multicamera jobs, product work and branded content, that can be particularly useful. If the same reference appears under each lighting setup, differences between cameras have a common point of comparison instead of becoming a small archaeological expedition in the grading suite.

September shuffle

The launch accompanies Datacolor’s Camera Calibration Weeks, running from 1 to 30 September 2026 in Europe. Datacolor says the new products are available through specialist photo retailers and its online store. The campaign also includes bundles combining SpyderCheckr Photo with additional Photo or Video cards, plus the broader Spyder Photo/Video Kit.

The underlying proposition is uncomplicated: establish colour earlier, keep the useful holder longer and give post fewer surprises. A piece of coloured card will not solve every camera-matching problem, but it can at least make the argument start from known evidence. Before standardising the cards across a production, crews should test them with representative cameras, lighting conditions and the actual downstream colour workflow.

https://www.datacolor.com/spyder/de/promotions/camera-calibration-weeks/